Transcript

Enda Brady: Good morning, everybody, and thank you for joining us. I’m Enda Brady, Certified Financial Planner and co-owner of iQ Financial with my brother, Coman. You’re all very welcome.

Today’s webinar is called Expert Strategies to Sell or Exit Your Business with Confidence. It’s our 2026 update of the session we ran in February 2025.

We’re delighted to once again be joined by Paul Cantwell of Cantwell Corporate Finance. Paul co-hosted with us last year, we had a very good response, and today we’re building on that to hopefully bring you even more value.

Over the next 30 minutes or so, we’ll cover what you need to think about to make your exit or sale as strong as possible. Not just for the business, but for you personally, and for your family.

Before we get started, just a little housekeeping to help us make the most of our time. I’ll hand you over to Maria Devine, our Senior Financial Planning Administrator and Office Manager here at iQ Financial.

Maria Devine: Hello, my job today is to keep things running smoothly, and I’ll also be reading out any questions you may ask. The way you can get involved is by clicking the QA button on your screen, where you can type your questions. To let you know that questions and comments you write in the Q&A are not visible to everybody, only the presenters and myself can see them, and we’ll read them out at the end. And you can also choose to submit questions there anonymously.

Also, only the presenters can see the list of attendees. Other attendees cannot see each other’s names.If there are any comments in the chat, these are visible for everyone to see. So we’ll answer questions at the end, and we want everyone to have their questions answered before you leave.

I will put a couple of links in the chat to our iQ Financial website, where you can access our guides for business owners, and where you can book a Learn More call, or sign up for our monthly newsletter for business owners.After the webinar, we’ll send a follow-up email with a recording of this session, the slides, and the links to our guides for business owners, so if you miss anything the first time round, you can catch up later. Okay, now I’ll hand back to Enda to get started.

Enda Brady: Thanks, Maria. This is our agenda for this morning. After a brief introduction to iQ Financial and Cantwell Corporate Finance, we have four key topics today. First, we’re going to look at what a Corporate Finance Advisor does. We’re going to talk a bit about how businesses are valued, and how potentially to increase that value. Second, what a Financial Planner does, and how they help you make the most of your exit personally.

Third, lessons from a recent case study management buyout that Paul will share. And fourth, and finally, our six-point checklist to help you develop the best strategy and make your exit as successful as possible for the business and for you personally.

We’re conscious that some of you may not be familiar with either iQ Financial or Cantwell Corporate Finance, so just a quick overview. At iQ Financial, we provide financial planning and investment management to business owners. We work with owners who want to sell, retire, or make work optional in 5 to 10 years. We help you plan for retirement, reduce taxes, provide for your family, and invest wisely. If you’d like to learn more www.iqf.ie is the best place to start, and we’ll share other ways to get in touch before we finish.

When we advise business owners, we focus on the personal side, your priorities, and what you need financially from the business. That fits perfectly with A Corporate Finance Advisor, like Paul, because Paul and his team focus on the business itself. They specialize in structuring and delivering successful exits, and in identifying the right strategy for your particular business. Paul, you’re very welcome, it’s great to have you back with us.

For those who may not know you, could you briefly introduce yourself? Explain what a Corporate Finance Advisor does, and then we’ll move into how businesses are valued. How are you?

Paul Cantwell: Very good, thanks very much for the opportunity to speak today. I’m a Chartered Accountant, but my practice specialises in corporate finance advice and corporate recovery advice. That means we focus primarily on dealing with businesses that are undergoing transactions, that are being sold, or where our clients are looking to acquire businesses, and also in terms of, on the recovery side, in terms of where businesses are in difficulty, how to actually, rescue them or wind them up.

Our main focus is primarily on succession planning and exiting for owners, and planning around their company. That’s primarily what we do. Recently, the levels of transactions we do would range in size from typically around about the €2 million mark, up to €40 million in terms of value for owners exiting businesses.

Enda Brady: Very good. We’re going to move on now, and we’ll talk a little bit about what a Corporate Finance Advisor does compared to some of the other brokers out there, and I think you’ll talk to us a bit about EBITDA and valuations as well, Paul.

Paul Cantwell: Yeah, I suppose a lot of people, whenever I talk to people and they say, what do you do, what’s a Corporate Finance Advisor? I say, well, the main thing I do is I sell businesses, but there’s a lot of confusion out there in terms of what exactly does that mean.

Paul Cantwell: In the last couple of years, there’s been a big growth in brokers of, you know, offering to sell businesses and targeting business owners, they look at the Company House returns for them, see businesses that are successful, and they contact them, saying, we’ll sell your business for you, and engage in that way. No, that’s not what we do, because what we find is that your contact and marketing of a business when it’s been sold is only about 5% of what’s required.

What we do is we work with owners to evaluate their business, to see, is it saleable, first of all, and consider their alternatives. And the ideal time for us to meet owners who are looking to sell their business, or exit their business, is probably 3 to 5 years before the exit, to look at what we can do to try and help them to maximize the value, and look at what is the right strategy for them to take. Sometimes, a lot of the time, selling independently or selling to an outside party, is the best option. But many times, it’s not the best option.

There are better alternatives to them, and changes need to be made to the business to make it more manageable. So, we like to spend our time working with them for a little bit in advance, or a small bit of planning, to look at what the right thing is. And sometimes I put you in a 3-5 year plan. That they can work with their Financial Planner to try and implement that over a period of time before they get there.

What we find is that when a lot of people go to the market before they’re ready to sell, and those type of sales don’t tend not to be successful. Buying a business for a buyer is very complicated, they have to put funding in place, they have to do due diligence, they have to appraise the risks and risks associated with it. And if the business hasn’t been prepared properly in advance, the sale is likely not to happen. So, once we go through that kind of process, we will go out and market the business to the selected buyers.

We’ll manage the process on their behalf, and we’ll act as the intermediary to make sure it happens. And there are a lot of things that happen as you’re going through a business process in the sales process in terms of true due diligence, quantifying working capital, things like that.

We’ve been through it before, we know what the issues are likely to be, and we work through.

Too sell a business, you don’t need any formal qualification, but what I would always say to people is if you’re going to sell a business, make sure you’re talking to a Corporate Finance Advisor who is an accountant, who understands the financial aspects of the business. The sales part itself is not necessarily the most important. But you also asked me to just talk about how business is valued.

Maria, if you just move on the slide for a moment.

I’m going to keep things as simple as I can for the discussion today. There are lots of different ways of valuing businesses, but for a typical trading business that’s profitable, the way to value that business is to calculate what’s known as the EBITDA of the business, which is the earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization. Really, what’s the kind of true underlying profitability of that business before you have exceptional or non-recurring items, or before the owner takes out a sort of a bonus salary above what they should be paying for their market rate? So, first instance is to calculate that.

You apply a multiple to it, and I’ll talk about that in a moment, and that gives you the trading value of the business. You then would add on the value of any non-core assets that are contained within the company. So, if there’s a surplus of cash that’s up in the business, or there’s, say, an investment property that’s not part of it, you add on to that. You take off the debt that’s in the company, and that gives you the enterprise value. What the value of the shares in the company are worth in the current format.

Now, if you’re selling the business, sometimes you’re going to have to plan around how you deal with the non-core assets, how to take those out of the company before it’s sold and it’s done in an efficient manner. Revenue look at the area of reorganizations of businesses immediately prior to the sale, so it’s important that you plan any extract of profits from the business well beforehand so that you don’t get under unnecessary scrutiny, and that it’s done at the right time. That’s a very important area where acting well in advance brings value.

But just to expand and explain a little bit more about EBITDA and so on, if you can move on again.

So how you calculate EBITDA, which I just touched on, is you go through what the pre-tax profits are, you add back any depreciation in the business, and you adjust for other items, such as notional rent, shareholder bonuses, or the cost of extra management involved.

We’re currently in the process of selling a business for two people who have always taken rent out of the business, but they’ve never taken a salary out of the business, and we’ve had to factor in, what the salary of replacing those owners is. Now, that was a very inefficient way of doing things. Really, that was an idea where, in terms of, they should have been taking out salaries and taking out pension contributions, and we’re having to go a route of liquidating that company to sell the business, because they didn’t properly go through the pre-planning process in advance.

But again, if, Maria, if you can move on.

So, the multiple that’s applied to the business, in terms of EBITDA, to determine what exactly the trading value is, it is determined by, it’s very much company-specific. But it’s based on the sector that the business is in, and market factors. So if your business is in a sector where there’s a lot of activity at the moment, where there’s a lot of acquisitions going on, things like accountancy practices, there’s a lot of those are being sold at the moment, a lot of activity there. The activity tends to increase what the multiple is, because the buyer has more choice in it, independence from the owner, how well the business will survive when the owner is extracted from the business is critical.

Other dependencies, if you have a business where 60% of the turnover is coming from one customer, that’s going to be of concern for a buyer, and they will look at what multiple they pay, and also maybe the structure of how they pay for the business to try and de-risk it from their perspective.

Level of capital required in the business. So, if you have, say, a plant hire business that you’re constantly replacing plant every 5 years, that’s going to impact on the multiple, because again, there’s a big cash flow demand for the cost of replacing equipment.

Growth prospects, synergies for buyers. If a buyer can kind of put the two businesses together, and, you know, they don’t need two accountants, they don’t need two sales directors, whatever else, that synergy helps them to maybe agree to pay more.

And obviously, the more people who are interested in buying the business, and are serious potential buyers, so that you have a competitive sales process will help. And, again, things like having a clear title to property, that there’s good ownership, that there’s no risks around a landlord deciding to take, you know, to change the terms, etc, would all help to make sure your multiple is higher.

So, one of the things we like to do in terms of the pre-planning is look at the businesses and look at those risks behind the multiples and see what we can do to try and address those. So, you know, if an owner’s happy with what they’re generating from the business, they might not go after growth prospects. So, if you can kind of work with them and say, well, why don’t you try and do this? They may also be overly dependent on a customer, who’s maybe not necessarily particularly profitable. If you can work on making that, broadening the risk, broadening your number of customers, increasing the margins from that customer, that helps.

And having a management team in place who’ll be able to take the business over from the owner. will mean you’ll get a higher multiple, and probably be in a better position for a cleaner exit from the business.

Enda Brady: I know we’re going to look at some changes that can be made with proper planning, Paul, but the 3-5 year time frame is vital in that respect, because if you have to change the structure of dependencies around key clients, or if you have to develop or find new staff that might take on a management role when the company is sold and to make it less dependent on you, those things take time. So they’re probably the two biggest reasons you need the 3-5 year runway, I would guess from what you covered there, Paul, would that be right?

Paul Cantwell: That would be very much so. Management team is absolutely critical in getting them in place, and sometimes the management team could actually be your buyer, if it’s structured the right way. So what we tend to do in those kind of situations where we think the management is the best buyer, is try and transition them into the ownership of the business, so that they’re better equipped and better set up to do the business.

But we’ve recently been through a sale of a company where they got an approach from a very complementary business who wanted to buy them, very keen to buy them for all the right reasons. The owner was at a point where they hadn’t really done a lot of work in terms of preparing for the planning work for the sale. They hadn’t got the due diligence information right. We were lucky that the buyer was particularly patient and was prepared to work with our client to enable us to kind of get the business ready for due diligence, bring it through the due diligence process to get it across the line. But that sale would have been far less stressful for the owner if they had taken a little bit more time to plan for the sale in advance.

Enda Brady: Very good. This next piece, Paul, am I right that the summary of this is how the advice can potentially improve your valuation over that lead-in period of 3 to 5 years?

Paul Cantwell: Yeah, I thought it would be helpful just to bring people through an example around the valuation, because, again, you know, business owners kind of ask, what’s my business worth? They like to think it’s a kind of a straightforward answer to do it. But I think the example will help show where this business is valued now and how it can be transitioned.

So, this is a typical type of company, a balance sheet that we would see, that we’ve just anonymized. Where the company has assets of nearly €4 million within the business, including €2 million of cash. And according to the accounts, the business is generating €320,000 a year as a profit before tax. Now, what we do is we then go and we delve into the business, and we look at how the balance sheet breaks down. So, Maria, if you just move on there?

Okay, so starting off, what we do is we look at what the EBITDA is, as I mentioned before. So in this business, it’s generating a profit before tax of €320,000. Depreciation is the D in EBITDA, we add that back. We also, in this instance, were assuming that the property is owned by the company. So, in that instance, what you do is you kind of take a value of the property separately, and you apply a notional rent to reflect what the business would rent if it was marketed at. And you also add back the director’s bonus that the directors have been paying themselves. So, in this case, the directors will be paying out €400,000 in terms of pension contributions, bonus salaries, etc, in terms of doing some external planning. So, the business is really generating an EBITDA of €740,000, or about 9% of its turnover. So, it’s a good, profitable business.

So, moving on, we’d also look at which assets within the balance sheet are required for the business, and which assets are not required for the business. So, in this case, you know, there’s plans and equipment worth about €400,000, which we would regard as core assets. There’s a core level of stock, a core level of debtors and trade creditors, so the total assets required for the business are about €1.4 million of the €4 million that’s there. The property’s valuation is probably at its original cost of €600,000, a bank balance of €2 million. So, there’s about €2.6 million of non-core assets within that business. So, the key factor here is to look at how the 2.6 is impacted. So, moving on again. How we would value the business there is we would then take the EBITDA of €740,000, and we would, based on the factors I mentioned in terms of the multiples, we’ve determined what multiple is appropriate to the trading business, and we apply that. So, in this instance, as an example, we’re using an EBITDA of about 4.5 times, which is probably around where a lot of businesses generating that level of EBITDA are selling for. Obviously, some are higher, some are lower, but a kind of, let’s say, a mid-risk one at that level. So, we value the trade in that instance at about €3.3 million.

Paul Cantwell: And we would also add in the value of the property based on what the notional rent might be. So that could be 12, 15 times the rent, depending on the nature of the property, where the location is, and so on. So, the value of the trading side of the business including the property, is €4 million. And the non-core assets add to a value of about €2 million. So it’s €6,050,000 is where we came up with the value in this instance. The goodwill is really the difference between the value of the trade and the value of the core assets for the business. So, the figure we mentioned was that 1.4 was the kind of core level of assets.

A key aspect in any transaction is negotiate what is the core level of assets in the business, and what is the surplus? But you also have to plan how you take out those non-core assets in the right time frame, and when you do it, and make sure you have a mechanism to do that. And sometimes, if you have a business that today is very profitable, has a lot of cash built up, over the next 3 or 4 years, it’s going to continue to build a lot of value for the shareholders. It’s how you take out that value, and you have to work with your Personal Financial Advisor to take out that wealth using a methodology. But a key thing, what we would always try to do is, if we start out with a valuation like this, is how we work to increase that value.

So, moving on again. What we would like to see with the business like this, in terms of over the next couple of years, is working with the owner to try and transition that value forward. So looking at how they can increase the EBITDA in a sensible way, not doing anything necessarily crazy, or taking any kind of risks. Sensible, normal growth and turnover, but very focused in terms of what type of business they take on, trying to focus on, kind of, more higher-margin, trying to broaden the risk in terms of their customer profiles, and so on. So, if that business over the course of the next 5 years could grow its EBITDA by 400,000, but also kind of improve the factors determining its multiple, you’d be aiming to increase the multiple from 4.5, maybe to 6 times. So, the value of the core business would go up from €3.3 million up to €6.8 million, so you’re almost doubling the business from that perspective. Adding on the non-core assets, you’re looking at the business transforming the business upwards in value by over 50%. But what’s not shown there on the slide, and I think I have it on the next slide,

Over that time frame, there’s probably about €3.5 million of pre-tax profits being generated within the business. So, what you can look at, what you need to work at with your Corporate Finance Advisor and your Financial Advisor, is how you use that €3.5 million, in a way, to fit with your plan in terms of what you want to do from a wealth perspective. Should it remain in the business? Should it be invested in further in the business, or should it be taken out in terms of profits and so on?

Now, if you are going to do something like a sale of the business to a management team, you’d handle it differently, too, if it’s a question of a sale to a completely external party. There’s an opportunity over that kind of time frame of working with someone to try and both increase the value of the business, but also in terms of generating that kind of personal wealth and using that wisely. So, in total there, you’re looking at an uplift, you’re looking at really doubling the value of your assets between the pre-tax profits that you’ve generated, and the growth in value over that time frame.

Enda Brady: Very good. We’d be heavily leading there, Paul, with the business bank account of the company using those trading profits to put it into pension arrangements, ideally for their partners and their spouses, if they’re working in the business. That would be the first level that we would go to. It paints the picture of what a third-party purchaser or any new management might need when they’re taking over a business, and the impact that planning can have over a relatively short period of time in your career before you exit successfully, yeah.

Maria Devine: So, I’m just going to remind everybody that your questions and comments that you write in the Q&A, they’re not visible to everyone, only the presenters and myself can see them. We’ll read them out at the end, and you can also submit a question anonymously, so please do take advantage of that. If you want to talk about any of the topics in more detail, you can send us a message in the Q&A and we’ll set up a meeting for you, or you can use the link in the chat to our website to book a Learn More call. Okay, I’m going to hand back to Enda now.

Enda Brady: We have a couple of more topics to finish. We are always conscious of time, guys, but we have a couple of more topics that we can finish within the time. We just want to explain to you our role. Financial planning and getting the very best outcome from your business exit is a team sport. A key member of that advisory team is your Personal Financial Planner. That’s the role we play at iQ Financial. Your long-term guide before, during, and after the exit.

At a minimum, your Financial Advisor or Planner should do four things for you:

1. Create a clear personal financial plan. That includes identifying your number, the minimum you and your family need from the exit or sale to fund your lifestyle and priorities.
2. Help you extract funds tax-efficiently in the years leading up to the exit, in line with Paul’s example there.
3. Invest your proceeds wisely, aligned with your long-term personal plan.
4. And be your sounding board at every stage of the journey. In our situation, iQ Financial clients have been involved in tens of transactions in recent years, and we’ve learned a little from most of those exits. That experience can help the next business owner in the same situation. With the right team around you, you give yourself the best chance of maximizing value and making the transaction smoother, both financially and personally.

Now, I’ll hand back to Paul. We’re going to look at I think it’s a management buyout case study, but we’re going to look at a short case study.

Paul Cantwell: Thanks, Enda. As I said earlier on, selling a business externally isn’t always the best option, and this is an example of a case study that worked for a client of ours.

It was a wholesale distribution company owned by the two founders and their spouses. They’d recently brought in a very experienced general manager to work with them in the business. Historically, what they had done is they had extracted whatever profits were available after providing for their working capital needs in pensions and bonuses, and were quite in a strong position independently. And they were looking towards a kind of a three-year business plan, whether we’re prepared to sell the business right now, and stay with the owners, or stay with the new buyers for a period of about 3 years. We looked at that business, and we said to them they would probably be able to generate around €4.85 million as the selling price of the business, but that the buyer would be likely to require them to stay on for a year and a half, two years, in order to get that price, and they’d probably get €5 to €5.2 million if they stayed on and worked with them over that time frame.

So, we looked at an alternative, which is on the next slide, which was that we looked, we went through the options for the MBO and the trade sale. The preferred option with the client was to go towards a management buyout route where the general manager would buy them in, and they were very happy he was the right guy for them, and he was supported by other members of the management team.

So, we put in place growth shares within the company that would give him an equity stake in the business over the ensuing 3 years. We changed the shareholder strategy on bonuses and pensions to facilitate a build-up in the company value, so that the general manager would share in part of that, and would allow him to build up equity. And we worked towards an option for the sale or management buyout within the 3-year period.

We also spoke with the company’s existing banks and a different bank to try and just ensure, just check and try to make sure what funding would be available for the general manager when we got to the point of exit. So, again, just on the following slide, just to share the outcome with you.

Three years after the original plan, we completed a management buyout of the company by the general manager. It was probably around this time last year when we finished it.

The outer price achieved by the original owners, including the profits they built up over the ensuing period that were taken out as part of the sales process, were €6.8 million. So, they achieved €2 million more than they would have originally got if they’d sold at the time.

They took on much less risk, because they were involved in the business over the transition period, and the general manager was involved in the business, knew the business as well. Because he knew the business, understood the business, there was much less due diligence and costs incurred on the transaction than in the sale. I would say the due diligence and costs on the business were probably somewhere in the region of 40% to what would typically be the case, but an awful lot less stress in terms of having an external due diligence process underway. So it was a much better outcome for the business.

And they’re the kind of things that we like to work towards for our owners. If you can get out and achieve the number that works for you without having to,take risks around selling the business, it’s a great option.

Enda Brady: Very good. Developing your strategy to exit, this is the last of the four topics, folks. It’s your checklist for what you need to do, to maximize, how strong an exit you can have. This is the last piece of 4, Paul, isn’t it?

Paul Cantwell: That’s it. So, again, and some of this we’ve probably, we’ve covered already, so I go over those.

Enda Brady: Yeah, it’s a kind of a summary, it’s kind of a checklist for owners, yeah.

Paul Cantwell: So ideally,

• Start your process early, 5 years ahead of exit would be great timing if you can do it, and if you’re at the right point to do that.
• Don’t assume your business is saleable to a third party, as it is, because many businesses aren’t saleable, and if they’re not saleable, you need to really look at the alternatives that are there.
• Select an advisor, who understands your business. From a corporate finance perspective and a personal perspective. Because the last thing you want is someone pulling you down the road of selling a business if it’s not going to be the right option for you, and you’re not going to achieve the right buyer for it. Make sure you’re looking at the other options before looking at the sale.
• Making the business independent of you is really important, because that will facilitate the exit where you don’t have to stay around for as long. A question I often ask people who come to me on this is, if you had kids in Australia, could you go and visit them for 4 to 5 weeks? And how would that impact on the business? And if you can do that, if both you and your spouse can go and go away and travel away for that time, and the business can cope, then you have a great business that’s very saleable.
• Try and resolve problems and deal breakers in advance. If you’ve done work around the property where you have added in different facilities, different pieces, or changed the layout of it, get the planning permission right, because if that goes wrong, we all know what the planning process is like in Ireland. You don’t want to have problems on that front. While the deal is going on. Things like deal breakers, customers, you know, historical litigation, everything else, try and get those done. But just make sure you’re ready to go, if you’re going to go and sell, make sure you’re ready to go to the market at the right time.

Enda Brady: Very good. It’s 10.32, guys. That’s the main core topics. Before we go to live questions, Maria, I believe we have some questions that were sent in in advance.

Maria Devine: Yes, we’ll take a look at the questions now. We’ll finish on time, but we’ll stay online to keep answering the questions that have come in. Everyone who registered for our webinar this morning will receive a recording and a copy of the slides, so you can watch the question section back if you need to.

Our first question that was sent in was, where do buyers find companies, typically?

Paul Cantwell: I’ll answer that question, Maria. What we find is that people do not, well, there are sites out there advertising businesses for sale. That’s not how people find them. Where our clients buy business is generally they’re targeted, and it’s somebody who they’ve dealt with will come to them and say, I’m thinking about using their business, or their Corporate Finance Advisor will come to them and say, this is an opportunity which we think fits with your business, this is why you should look at it, and they make the case as to why that makes a sensible case. But it’s a good idea, this is where the pre-planning comes into play, that you look at your business, you say, who would be the best type of buyer for this? And you come up with a plan as to how you start interacting with those potential buyers at the right time to create the interest within them.

Maria Devine: Okay, goods, thanks. And another question that came in before the webinar was, what are the top 5 things purchasers look for when looking to acquire a business?

Enda Brady: That’s you again, Paul.

Paul Cantwell: It depends really, how does that business fit with what they do themselves? So, in terms of, a recent transaction that we did was the buyer was focused on a particular aspect of a particular sector of the business. My client was something that was quite complimentary in terms of skill-wise, so they wanted that, that they knew enough about the business to be able to take that business on and generate it and work it on.

We get a lot of people contact us looking to buy businesses who maybe owned businesses before and would like to take them on acquiring a business. Their big concern for them is how they fit with that business. Now, you know, ideally, they’ll have somebody from the food industry buying something else within the food industry, and that makes sense for them.

But they will also look at, well, how will that business transition across? Is there already, you know, someone who understands the product sales team in place? That work independently of the owners, so that when they buy that business, that it will fit with them, and fit with what they do, and their kind of, their skills set.

Maria Devine: Okay, thanks. And the next question is, should you set up a company rather than be a sole trader?

Enda Brady: Should you set up a company? I’ll take that one. If you’re committed to a business for the next 5 years plus, if it’s not a sideline, and you, think it’ll be one of your main parts of your career, or one of your main sources of income, and you’re turning over maybe a six-figure sum or more, it’s always better to have a limited company. It gives better, protection against creditors, gives you more options to extract funds through pension and other things by having a limited company.

It separates you from the business, so it’s good in terms of the business being available to be sold in the future. And there’s different reliefs available to a limited company, to a director of a limited company, to an owner of a limited company, if the business just wants to be liquidated down the line, there’s some capital reliefs for that. In the vast majority of situations, it makes sense to have a limited company. Would you agree with that, Paul?

Paul Cantwell: Yeah, definitely it makes far more sense. The key thing to me is that the profits you generate in a company are taxed at 12.5%, so if you want to go and spend 12.5% tax on the profits as opposed to 52%, so it’s easier to reinvest in the business if you go for a company structure.

Maria Devine: Okay, thanks. And the next one is a query about passing parents’ shareholdings down to their child or children.

Paul Cantwell: Yeah, okay, this is where the 3-5 year planning in advance is really important. So what if someone comes to us, say, a family, we look at, well, how ready are the children to take over the business, and are they the right people to take it over? Have they the right management skills? Often what you’ll find is, in a typical family business, the company or business makes up the main part of the company’s wealth.

So you try and plan for transition, where there’s an opportunity for the owners to take out a certain amount of the value out of the business to ensure they have financial security for themselves, and maybe they want to do things in terms of supporting other family or kids that don’t work in the business as well, in terms of assisting them. It’s really to try and make that transition as stress-free as possible for it, and make sure that the family are ready for it. We have seen when it’s done right, it’s great. Unfortunately, we’re not seeing as much, because most people’s kids are ending up going off to pursue different careers, or want to do something different, or the parents want to exit at a younger age. If you leave it too late, and you assume they’re going to take it over and they’re not ready, you’re probably going to leave a row, and that’s best avoided by kind of planning and making sure you’re ready for it in advance.

Enda Brady: Paul, you touched on that before in the recent past. Is it a case that succession to family members is much less than it typically was? And have you a rough percentage on that? What sort of numbers did we see in the past, and what kind of percentages, you know, do we see now, if they’re less?

Paul Cantwell: You know, when I was training as a Chartered Accountant, one of the partners I worked for had written a book about family business, and talked about how, I think it was 65% of businesses fail when they get to the third generation. What we’re seeing now is probably, I would say it’s only very few businesses, it’s probably about 1% get to the third generation. Now, most of that is down to the family aren’t coming on board or aren’t ready to do it. Businesses have a shorter lifespan, because maybe technology, etc… is a factor within that. And parents probably have started businesses later, their kids aren’t ready at the right point in terms of transition, so they look at exiting or selling a different way. It’s a dangerous role to just assume it’ll pass on to the next generation. Really important to kind of look at what are the alternatives.

Maria Devine: Very good. Okay, so now we move on to the questions that have come in while we were speaking. The first one is, could you please let me know a typical multiple of EBITDA that would be used for the sale of an accountancy practice with an EBITDA of circa 500,000 euros?

Enda Brady: Nice, easy one for you, Paul, and thank you for the specific question, in fairness.

Paul Cantwell: Again, it will, it will depend. Actually, going back, before the recent, kind of, growth in sales of accountancy practices and the like, accountancy practices were valued based on the fee turnover, which was typically around one times the fees. But it also entailed the partner staying within the business, or being involved in the business for kind of a 3-year period to make sure, and it was based on what actually transitioned across. So, it was effectively, depending on the level of profitability within the practice, it was probably around 3 times EBITDA.

Now, what we have seen within the marketplace is that practices now can be sold for up to around the six times mark, right? But it is down to, as well, what the mix is, how recurring the income is, you know, if one particular client is making up a huge chunk of that, it’s going to be different. So, you do have to get into the specifics of it. And, you know, how ready it is and where it is, but happy to talk to someone in more detail about it if they want.

Enda Brady: You’re stuck now, Paul. If they come to you, you have to get them at least 6!

Maria Devine: Thanks. The next one is, what’s the typical cost to engage with a Corporate Financial Planner?

Paul Cantwell: I suppose it depends on the role and the job, the assignment that we do. If someone just wants consultations, we charge based on an hourly rate, based on the time that it’s going to be. If we’re taking on a kind of a sale assignment or something like that, it’s also based on the specifics of the sale, and, you know, tends to be kind of success-based fee within those.

It’s incredible sometimes it kind of raises off the value that we can add by making small changes in the business, like a one- or two-hour consultation. We’ve say to people, you’re missing doing this, and if you change this around, you’re going to save. There’s one particular example I can think of where getting them to do one particular change could save them €200,000. I’d be disappointed if anyone came to us that we couldn’t. I do think we tend to, you know, get value out of a consultation from that way, even if it’s just getting your head kind of clear as to what you want to do.

Enda Brady: You can correct me if I’m wrong here, Paul. There is the option of a strategy half day or day to sit down and give people a heads up for nominal enough numbers on, well, in your case, the likely paths are X, and the likely fees are to give you a chance. To have a look at their situation in a little bit of detail, so that they can then, spend a nominal amount from the business before they know what the impact and time and cost might be after that, and the strategy that makes most sense to them. You know, they can do a strategy half day or a day.

Paul Cantwell: Yeah, we’re happy to do that, and, like, if someone wants to talk to us afterwards, or talk through Enda and Maria, we’ll figure out when is the right time to have that consultation, and we’d be happy to participate in it, if need be.

Maria Devine: Thanks. The next question is, for service businesses, does one tend to get a better sale, both in terms of price and ease of deal, if you sell to a direct competitor rather than a more distant buyer?

Paul Cantwell: I’m going to start off with ‘It Depends’, again, unfortunately. Sometimes it really is down to that particular business. The danger with a direct competitor, is are they going to use the sales process to, you know, find out about your business, and take advantage, and kind of go to your customers, etc. It takes a bit of management. Sometimes you have to look at what’s the best in terms of a risk profile. Often in the service business, if you could actually sell to your management team, it’s less risk than an external sale. Distance buyers, you know, it will depend upon size or whatever else as well, but again, that’s where the pre-planning fit comes into who’s the right fit for you.

Maria Devine: Very good. And the last question we have here is, can you give guidance on sales taxes arising, how you shelter them, and tax clawbacks?

Paul Cantwell: Yeah, that’s something within the pre-planning piece, you would do. The main kind of tax reliefs that are there if you sell a trading business, which you have owned the shares in the company for over 10 years, and the consideration, the gain is up to €750,000, that can be tax-free. That’s retirement relief is the relief you’d avail of there.

For larger companies or larger sales, there’s a relief, again, for trading companies, there’s a relief called entrepreneurial relief, which effectively reduces the tax under consideration for the first million and a half of a gain received from 33% down to 10%. So, that’s a once-in-a-lifetime relief.

So, for most businesses, it’s the first million and a half is at 10%, provided you meet the criteria for entrepreneurial relief, and after that, it’s at 33%.

In terms of clawbacks, clawbacks tend to be more about, if there’s a business transfer between family. That if you sell within a particular period, if you transfer the business to a family member, and they sell the business within 6 years, that the retirement relief can be clawed back. But one concern that you would always have to look at in a business is that the non-core cash that’s built up within a business. There’s a particular provision within the tax legislation that it can be regarded as a distribution. Now, distributions are taxed at income tax rates, which is into the, you know, 50% plus. So it’s important in terms of you planning your transaction, that you look at

how that’s dealt with, are there opportunities, should you take the money out beforehand at a particular tax rate? Should you move it into a pension, so you minimize the money and the amount involved, so you don’t fall into the rate of income tax on parts of the proceeds. But that’s good, sensible tax planning that you should be doing with your accountant, your Corporate Finance Advisor, and your Financial Advisor as you go along.

There are things you should be looking at that before your year-end, again, with your Financial Planner. You should be looking at what your profit is going to be. Like, if someone has, say, a March year-end, you’re now at the end of February, you should be looking and saying, well, what’s my profit going to be this year? I’m taking out part of that in terms of a pension contribution from the business, and what do I need to leave in because if you do put in a pension fund, you can then avail of the reliefs when you take the money out of your pension.

Enda Brady: On that question, if they go to our website, www.iqf.ie, and they look at the past webinars, this is webinar number 10, we’ve done two pure tax webinars, one last year and one the year before, and they cover the reliefs from capital gains when you exit or sell a business. So, there’ll be a little bit more information for the person who asked that question in those webinars around what Paul has introduced there, retirement relief and entrepreneur relief.

Paul Cantwell: Yeah, there’s a lot of good things that can be done within the sale process, involving reorganizations of the business in advance. And we would always work with the tax, like, I have good knowledge of tax, but we would always bring in a specialist tax advisor to work alongside and make sure that you do sensible tax planning in advance of a sale.

Maria Devine: Yeah, that’s all the questions.

Enda Brady: Very good. Folks, Just a final couple of things. As we’ve said on previous, webinars, and it absolutely applies today. One of our goals is to jolt you into action. This is just information, unless you act on it. A strong theme from today is planning early. The sooner you put a clear strategy in place, the more you stack the odds of a better exit in your favour.

If you want to exit or sell your business in the next 5 years, the time to get advice is now. If you’d like to speak with us, go to www.iqf.ie  and contact us from there, and you can contact Paul and his team at www.cantwellcf.ie.

Thanks a million, Paul, to you and your team for the time and effort you put into today’s webinar, it’s greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Paul Cantwell: You’re welcome, and thanks, Enda and Maria.

Enda Brady: Folks, just finally, we hope you found today’s webinar valuable, and we genuinely welcome your feedback. It helps us make each event better. We’ll leave this slide up for a few minutes, so you can leave a review. We’ll also include a review link in tomorrow’s email with the webinar recording. Thank you in advance if you take the time to review. Reviews really matter to us.

This is the first of our 2026 webinar series for business owners. Our goal is simple with these. Use webinars to help business owners with their most important financial decisions, and to improve the quality of each webinar we deliver.

We’ll continue bringing in experts like Paul and sharing practical lessons from other business owners, all with the aim of helping everyone in our network achieve better outcomes in their business and personally. We’ll be announcing the next webinar shortly. Thanks a million for your time this morning. Goodbye.